10 talented Japanese women whose work the world admires

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Japan's art history is one of the richest in the world. And as a rule, often, it is the male artists, sculptors and photographers who are in the spotlight, receiving tremendous recognition from the public. But these talented Japanese women were able to prove not only to themselves, but to the whole world that gender does not matter for creativity, and that the weak half of humanity is in no way inferior to the strong.

1. Yayoi Kusama

When it comes to iconic Japanese artists, the name of Kusama Yayoi, who is perhaps the most famous of them working today, immediately pops up. Most art lovers are probably familiar with her polka-dot pumpkins, which Kusama considers “the funniest of vegetables”!

After spending her entire life fighting hallucinations, Kusama became interested in art to help cope with her inner struggles by placing her in the physical realm. Despite the fact that she is almost ninety years old, she works as fruitfully as before. And more recently, this extraordinary woman opened the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Sanjuku, Tokyo, which is so popular that everyone who wants to visit it needs to book tickets several months in advance! But even if you do not have the opportunity to visit Tokyo, you can always find a dozen of her works on the Internet in order to get acquainted with the work of one of the most legendary Japanese artists, who spent most of her life in an insane asylum.

2. Shiota Chiharu

One of the most significant and revolutionary installers in Japan, Shiota Chiharu was born in Osaka, but lives and works in Berlin. Over the years of her activity, she managed to become famous all over the world thanks to her breathtaking panoramic canvases created from threads, hoses and other things, as well as other fairly abstract objects. For Shiota, the connections she forms represent the interconnectedness of people and things, and the complex, intertwined nature of human relationships. Despite the fact that Shiota has lived in Germany since 1996, she is considered one of the most famous contemporary Japanese artists in her homeland, while remaining a significant role model for women artists around the world. Not surprisingly, in 2014, she was chosen to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale.

3. Tabaimo

says Tabaimo in a video released by the Swedish Moderna Museet. For several years now, the modern Japanese animator-animator has been showing his work all over the world and is well known for his video installations, which by their nature are both magical and uncomfortable. Tabaimo's work tends to focus on society, especially Japan's social work, questioning it in its own way.

Her animation style contains elements of ukiyo-e and early manga drawings, but in general it is all done by her own way of displacing or separating objects in the illustrations she created. In her 2001 video installation Japanese Suburban Train, a pile of disembodied human hands can be seen lying on the floor. Passengers do not notice anything and are either absorbed in their newspapers, mobile phones, or asleep. Her works are often so surreal that they often take the viewer to various urban or natural landscapes, leaving behind ambiguous and ambiguous impressions., says Tabaimo in his video message to the public (2006), which explores “boundaries or lack thereof” in public and private spaces.

4. Mori Mariko

Mori Mariko was born in Tokyo in 1967 and is an artist whose work combines the history of Japan with its breathtaking futuristic visions. Working in the fields of sculpture, photography and digital art, Mori embodies the cultural opposition of Japan as a futuristic society with a rich historical foundation. In 2010, Mori founded a non-profit organization known as the Faou Foundation, which celebrates the connection between art and the natural environment by creating contemporary art installations. around the world.

5. Shirley Kaneda

Born in Japan to Korean parents, Shirley Kaneda expresses her familiarity with "hybrid identity." During a public conversation at the New York Studio School in 2018, Kaneda reflects on a photograph of his family taken in 1954 in Japan. The photograph shows her mother and brother dressed in Western clothes, and as a child she is wearing a colorful Korean national dress that she believes could have inspired and even shaped some of her "visual experiences." abstract artist aims to understand what it means to be abstract. Therefore, she often looks for ways with which to touch not only feelings, but logical intelligence, which generates a lot of conflicting reflections. By extracting sensitivity from the viewer, her paintings give a tangible reaction as proof that they are worthy of "existing critically." She says being an artist is like. And it is not at all surprising that the titles of some of her paintings, such as "Senseless Clarity" or "Confident Understanding", reflect the opposite feelings that we find in art and in life.

6. Ninagawa Mika

Ninagawa Mika is another woman whose work adorns the entire spectrum of art. A photographer and filmmaker, she is world famous for her brightest, almost acidic photographs of flowers, fish and landscapes that shine brighter than the neon signs of Tokyo. And it is not at all surprising that this Japanese woman has reached colossal heights not only in the advertising field, but also in the film industry. After all, her work leaves few people indifferent, and some even cause a desire to transfer unrealistically bright images to kimonos or wedding dresses.

7. Ohawa Nanase

The mid-1980s brought the world to Clamp, an all-female Japanese manga group that produced works such as Tsubasa and Cardcaptor Sakura.

Ohawa Nanase (also known as Ageha Okawa), their leader, director, and storyteller, who to this day has primary responsibility for writing the scripts that Clamp produces and guiding the storytelling process. The rest of their group of four is involved in illustration and character creation and development. Before they reached fame, the girls lived together in a small two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo. Today, the group continues to thrive and work collaboratively using its own editing and spelling checker system.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2006, Okawa talked about the role of women in both animation and manga, concluding that the manga scene offers more opportunities for women than the animation world. As a matter of fact, it is a way for them to express themselves freely. After all, strong female characters have become very common in the manga, thereby making it clear that a woman can also be strong and independent.

8. Kawauchi Rinko

Prominent Japanese photographer Kawauchi Rinko first gained international success around 2001, when she ambitiously published three photography books - Utatane, Hanabi and Kanako at the same time - and her enchanted and subtle style of photography earned her an honorary fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society. By focusing on capturing the ordinary moments of everyday life, her work makes even the most mundane things seem so beautiful that they often cannot be taken away from them.

9. Yoshiko Shimada

Yoshiko Shimada is known for her work that engages the audience in issues of society and its relationship to women, as well as sexuality. In particular, she explores the creation of organizations and governments that wield power, shedding light on specific abuses committed by them against women and other minorities. Working in such areas as performances, sculptures and video installations, Shimada touches on topics related to the prejudice of women by the public, including politicians and employers, who almost sneer at the representatives of the weak half of humanity.

Over the past decade, Shimada's installation Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman has gone viral. The installation is dedicated to a specific location and event, and pays tribute to Korean women who were forced into prostitution during World War II. In 2017, after the mayor of Osaka announced that he would cut ties with San Francisco because they erected a similar statue, several artists took to the streets and supported Shimada's art by imitating the statue. And in 2019, women around the world photographed themselves again, mimicking the statue in response to an exhibition censored at the 2019 Aichi Triennale International Arts Festival. political differences.

10. Miyako Isiuchi

There is no shortage of talented female photographers in Japan, and Miyako Ishiuchi (Ishiuchi) is one of the names that sits at the top of this list. Born in Gunme in 1947 and raised in Yokosuka, she was deeply influenced by the atmosphere of the largest Japanese ports and cities that were occupied by the American military after World War II. In 2014, she became the first Asian woman to receive the Hasselblad Foundation's International Photography Award.

A heartbreaking collection of Hiroshima photographs documenting personal and household items found after the atomic blast was donated to former US President Barack Obama during his historic visit to the city.

And in continuation of the topic - an article about how, having influenced the course of the history of China, left an indelible mark.